1st Place Heavy Boat on Thousand Hills Lake

Practice: My partner Paul Emmerich and I got out to do a little scouting on Thousand Hills during the week. We mainly checked water temperatures and for baitfish activity. I had a couple of spots that I wanted to check out and we shook off a couple of fish. The game plan going into the tournament was to fish jigs and plastics deeper in clearer water in the morning up by the dam and then to move to the dirty water once the sun got up to take advantage of an afternoon spinnerbait bite.

Tournament: The day started out pretty good as Paul was able to connect with a keeper on our second spot of the day. The fish was a little ways off the bank and fell victim to a brush hog. We caught a couple of shorts and decided it was time to move to our next spot. which was a channel swing bank that I have done well on in the past this time of the year. With the water temperatures in the mid 50's to start I knew some fish would be hanging out on it. We pulled up to it and I managed to snatch up two nice keepers off a rock pile on an OMEGA 5/16th oz jig. I modified my jig a little using the Naked Bait Co Skirt Expander. One of the things I did to make the jig more productive was put a couple of rattles in it and add some purple into my skirt. The trailer I was using was a Netbail Paca chunk in Alabama craw. That combination works really well out on Thousand Hills. We fished a couple of more staging holes managing to catch only shorts and we decided it was time to make the move down to some dirty water. The sun was beating down and there wasn't a whole lot of wind so we thought it would be best to head for some dirtier water in hopes of getting a couple on a spinnerbait. We moved to a channel swing where fish usually sit waiting to move up to spawn this time of the year and Paul was able to get his second keeper in the boat. It was a 4lber that smashed his spinnerbait. After fishing a bit without getting another bite we made short trip to a similar area and I was able to bag the 5th keeper that went about 3lbs on a black spinnerbait. I only caught the fish because I saw a shad getting chased and was able to capitalize on the moment by throwing my spinnerbait into the area. At this point we were running out of time and had about an hour left to go. We made a short trip again and fished a flat and a back channel swing which resulted in just a couple of more shorts. While I had higher hopes for the fishing our 5 keepers that went 12lbs and some change were good enough.

Terminal Tackle:
7' Medium Heavy AiRRUS Co-Matrix casting rod, Abu Revo Stx, 20lb test (Jig)
6'9'' Medium Heavy AiRRUS Ultra XL rod, Abu Revo Stx, 20lb test (Spinnerbait)